The Crown's Game Part 5

CHAPTER TEN.

They could be coming for me right now, Vika thought as she cast s.h.i.+elds around the cottage. Father had warned her not to be seen using magic, and now she'd been caught, and those boys could be summoning a mob to burn her at the stake. She fortified the windows a third time, especially the ones in Sergei's bedroom. He didn't deserve to die for her indiscretion. He didn't deserve to die at all.

Where was he?

She ran outside again, for it was possible that he'd arrived while she was inside and been unable to get in, given how tightly she'd protected their home. She saw him emerge from the forest just as she crossed the threshold of the cottage.

"Father! You're all right." She lifted the edge of the s.h.i.+eld around the front door to let him in. He stumbled into the entry.

"No, I'm not all right."

"Were you attacked?" Vika secured the protection charm and rushed to his side. Sergei was a big man, but right now, he seemed . . . small. Not literally, but he didn't take up as much s.p.a.ce in the entry as he normally did. On the contrary, it was as if the s.p.a.ce pushed on him and shoved him inside himself. "I'm sorry," Vika said. "I didn't mean to be seen, but I got carried away, and-"

"You were seen?"

"Yes, and now they've come after you."

Her father laughed, but in a mirthless way. "Oh, Vikochka, don't worry about being seen. Because things are so much worse than that." He tromped away from her and into their tiny kitchen.

Vika rushed in on his heels. "What are you talking about?"

"You will have to meet my sister soon, as if that weren't bad enough."

"You have a sister?"

"In Saint Petersburg. It's all related to . . ." He sank into a chair at their small dining table. "I need some kva.s.s first."

Vika brought a bottle of Sergei's homemade brew and poured him a mug. He downed it in a single gulp.

"We leave tomorrow for Bolshebnoie Duplo," he said.

"What?" The Enchanted Hollow. Vika knew the name like a pilgrim knew of Jerusalem. Every country-every country that still believed in the old ways, that is-had a physical, mystical heart from which its magic emanated, and Russia's heart was Bolshebnoie Duplo. Vika leaned across the table. "You know where Bolshebnoie Duplo is?" The name had always sounded to her captivating and wicked all at once.

"Yes. Knowing its location is part of my duty as your mentor."

"Your duty? Why exactly are we going there?"

"It is where you will take the oath for the Crown's Game."

"The Crown's Game." Vika did not even bother to inflect her tone upward this time, for everything now was a question mark. She was beyond using punctuation. "I don't know what that is."

"I didn't think there was a need for it. . . . I thought you were the only enchanter. But you're not, and that means there will be a . . . a test. A compet.i.tion."

Vika wrapped her fingers tightly around her father's mug. The glaze on the ceramic heated at her touch. There's another enchanter. And there will be a compet.i.tion.

Sergei didn't meet her eyes. He reached for a stale slice of bread on the table instead. "I'm in as much shock as you are. I had no clue my sister was mentoring an enchanter. I haven't heard from her since I left Saint Petersburg twenty-five years ago."

He tore the bread into pieces. And then into smaller and smaller pieces until it disintegrated into a pile of fine crumbs.

"What aren't you telling me, Father?"

He scooped all the crumbs into his hand and crushed them.

"Just say it."

He closed his eyes. "The tsar can have only one Imperial Enchanter. The enchanter who loses the Game dies."

"No . . . Why?" The mug in Vika's hands melted from pottery to clay.

"Each country's wellspring emits a finite amount of magic at any given time. It is not without limits. So the number of enchanters must be limited as well."

"But there have apparently been two of us all these years, not to mention you and your sister-"

"Yes, but the minor charms we conjure are relatively inconsequential," her father said. "As for you and the other enchanter, you've been splitting Bolshebnoie Duplo's magic between you. That's fine while you're training; in fact, it was likely better that you didn't have access to all of it while you were young and learning to control your powers. However, to serve the tsar-and to protect the empire from its enemies-the Imperial Enchanter will need all of Russia's magic, especially since Bolshebnoie Duplo is no longer as potent as it was when the people of our country still adhered to the old ways. The Imperial Enchanter must be the only major conduit of what magic remains. There cannot be any dilution."

It hadn't occurred to Vika that there might be an occasion when she couldn't execute an enchantment, for lack of magic. It had always been there when she needed it. But then again, she'd never attempted anything on as large a scale as Sergei was implying. She hadn't a clue how much power it might take to lead a war.

"I could steal Morocco's magic," Vika said. But the joke came out desperate and flat.

Her father scarcely pretended to smile. "Even Yakov Zinchenko wasn't powerful enough to steal magic from so far away. And magic is loyal to its countrymen, for it is those very countrymen whose belief sows it. Morocco's magic wouldn't answer to a Russian."

The kitchen grew colder. Vika hugged her arms around herself.

But why did death on the journey to becoming Imperial Enchanter shock her? Her father had warned her, hadn't he? There had even been a lesson when Vika was younger-a horrible lesson-in which he'd asked her to resurrect a stillborn wolverine pup. Vika had clenched her fists and gritted her teeth and mustered all the power she had to focus on the pup's heart, trying to feel if there were anything broken inside, anything she could move back together. She'd checked its muscles, its lungs, its stomach, liver, and every other organ, only to be met with silence. It turned out that had been the entire purpose of Sergei's lesson: to show her that death was real, and an inescapable part of the Imperial Enchanter's job.

So it should be no great revelation that dancing with death-defying death-could be part of the Imperial Enchanter's initiation.

Vika packed the clay from the former pitcher in her hands. It hardened into a ceramic cannonball. "I don't fancy dying."

Her father emptied the bottle of kva.s.s. "Then the only option is, you cannot lose."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

After telling Renata about the girl in the bonfire, Nikolai had spent the early evening on a prolonged walk around Saint Petersburg. The brisk fall air and the tranquil shush, shush, shush of the water in the ca.n.a.ls had helped calm his nerves a little; at least he'd managed to talk himself out of changing his appearance and fleeing to the steppe for the rest of his life.

When he came home and unlocked his bedroom door, however, his heart nearly burst out of his chest. There were animals everywhere-monkeys bouncing and shrieking on top of the armoire, vipers slithering across every inch of carpet, and a Siberian tiger on his bed. The tiger roared and leaped toward him.

"Sacre bleu!" Nikolai smashed the door shut from the outside and locked it tight. Then he snapped his fingers several times, and five new dead bolts appeared and slammed into place. The tiger rammed the other side of the door again and again. Nikolai's pulse pounded in his head to the same violent beat.

He was still plastered against the hallway wall, between a mirror and a portrait of an ancient Zakrevsky, when Galina appeared.

"Ah, Nikolai, you're home. I thought I heard you come in. You really ought to work on your stealth."

"Wh-what is that?" Nikolai pointed a shaky finger at his room.

"Do you like them? They're my pre-Game gift to you. You have no idea what I had to go through to have them s.h.i.+pped here. Which do you like most? The tiger? The snakes? Or the poisonous lorises? Good gracious, you prefer the painfully adorable lorises, don't you?"

Lorises. That was what they were. Not monkeys. Nikolai peeled himself off the wall. "Why are they in my room?" He enunciated each syllable, as if that would help Galina comprehend what he was asking.

She checked her reflection in the mirror and wiped away a small smudge of makeup. "The Game is beginning-well, it will as soon as you take the oath. And if you are to have a chance at winning, you need all the practice you can get."

The Game is beginning?

"You do want to win, don't you?"

"I-"

"Of course you do." She smiled, now that she knew her makeup was flawless. "If you win, you'll finally have wealth and respect. Well, respect in a warped sense, since no one can ever know exactly what we magical types do for the tsar. But regardless, they'll know you're an adviser of some sort, and besides, half his Imperial Council does nothing anyway. In any case, it's everything a poor orphan like you never had and could only, until now, dream hopelessly of."

Nikolai clenched his teeth. It was just like Galina to think he was so unoriginal that his fantasies would be the same as the dreams of any other common boy. Of course he wanted to be Imperial Enchanter. Nikolai's entire life-at least since he was seven-had been predicated on that one goal. He was an Imperial Enchanter-in-Training. There was nothing else he wanted to be. And he would certainly make a lousy sheepherder at this point.

But becoming Imperial Enchanter was about much more than wealth and power to him, unlike what Galina was suggesting. It was also about becoming closer to Pasha, who was like a younger brother to him, and closer to a family of some sort, even if it wasn't Nikolai's own. Because, needless to say, Nikolai had no real family. He was, and always had been, alone.

"What do you get if I win?" Nikolai asked. For surely there was something in this for Galina. She was not the self-sacrificing type. Not by any measure.

"I did it for our country," she said, "and I did it for the tsar. If you prevail, I have the honor of having been your mentor."

Nikolai arched a brow.

"And of beating my brother."

"You have . . . relatives?" Nikolai couldn't help that his jaw dropped. It seemed impossible that Galina came from an actual family. But of course she had mentioned before that she descended from a long bloodline of mentors. It made sense that if she had a brother, he'd be a mentor, too. And that besting him in a compet.i.tion would motivate her.

"But enough about rewards," Galina snapped. "You need to secure victory first. We leave tomorrow for the site where you will take the oath to begin the Game. So what you need to be focused on is your last opportunity for training, and that begins with the tiger and snakes and lorises in your room." She clapped her hands, and one by one, the locks Nikolai had conjured began to unbolt. Only the last lock remained latched. She smiled viciously as she pushed him toward the door.

"But what am I to do with-"

"Kill them before they kill you. Do you want to know how you really win the Game? How you ensure it? You don't play nice, Nikolai. If you're smart, you'll think of the Game like a chess match. You could take your time, plotting moves to frustrate your opponent, prancing about the chessboard and showing off your abilities while trying to paint the other enchanter into a corner. Or . . ." Galina's smile grew sharper. "You could go straight for the king. The girl, in this case. Use your magic to kill her and end the Game yourself. Don't give the tsar the chance to choose anyone but you."

Nikolai's limbs liquefied. Or at least he felt as if they had. "I have to kill her?"

"Did you think the losing enchanter would simply get to live happily ever after?"

"I . . . Well, what else was I supposed to believe? You never even hinted at it before."

"Would you have continued your training if I had?"

Nikolai just stared at her.

"That's what I thought. The animals in your room are your final lesson. If you want any chance at winning the actual Game, you'd better get accustomed to blood on your soul."

And with that, Galina unlatched the last lock and shoved Nikolai to the dangerous side of his bedroom door.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Vika expected Bolshebnoie Duplo to be an enormous hollow of a tree, but there were no trees in this dusty place. In fact, there were no holes at all, only the sheer granite base of Tikho Mountain, the expansive, overcast sky, and the unnerving quiet of solitude. But after a three-day journey, her father swore this was where they needed to be.

Vika and Sergei had arrived at the mountain on horseback several hours ago, having spent the previous night at an inn in the nearby village of Oredezh. Galina and the other enchanter were nowhere to be seen. And the tsar, her father had explained, would be the last to arrive, for tsars did not wait for anyone.

If only Vika and Sergei could have evanesced here, it would have taken a lot less time. But Vika almost laughed aloud at herself for the thought. Evanescing took incredible amounts of power, energy, and concentration. You needed to dissolve yourself completely, then convince the wind to carry you to your destination-all while keeping the dissipated components of yourself in close proximity to one another-and finally, rea.s.semble yourself and materialize. Vika had only ever succeeded in evanescing once, and she had moved a mere two feet before she panicked and put herself together again. She had spent the remainder of the day dead asleep on the banks of Preobrazhensky Creek.

Still, this journey to Bolshebnoie Duplo had been exhausting in its own way. Her father had insisted that Vika be shrouded from the minute they left the golden trees of Ovchinin Island, because they did not know at what point their path would cross that of his sister and her student. It was vital that Vika keep her ident.i.ty from the other enchanter, for it would be harder for him or her to hurt Vika in the Game if the other enchanter didn't know who she was and, therefore, at whom to aim.

So a translucent haze surrounded Vika, s.h.i.+fting her appearance to whatever the onlooker expected to see. To the innkeeper at Oredezh, who had a.s.sumed the woman accompanying Sergei was his wife, she had looked like a middle-aged woman, with country clothes and rough features to match her husband. To the stable boy who saddled their horses, she had seemed to be a young man, an obedient son to a grumbling father. And to herself, when she had pa.s.sed by a lake reflecting her image, she had appeared wild and feral, her outside as out of control as her inside. Or perhaps this was how she'd actually looked.

Her father, on the other hand, looked the same as ever, although the bags under his eyes were darker and more p.r.o.nounced. He had refused to allow Vika to use her own strength to maintain the shroud, insisting she needed to preserve it for the Game. Thus, Sergei had been maintaining the field of energy around her for three days, which was a prodigious stress that pushed the very limits of his abilities. In the privacy of their room at the inn last night, Vika had finally forced him to let go of the shroud so he could get some rest. Only then had he relented. But he'd reinstated the shroud as soon as he'd woken that morning.

Now the oath drew near. What would her opponent see of her appearance? Did he or she have a similar shroud? And if so, what would Vika see?

An hour before the ceremony, a pale yellow carriage appeared on the horizon. It didn't bounce on the rocky soil leading up to Tikho Mountain, nor did it make any noise. As the carriage came closer, Vika noticed that its wheels didn't actually touch the ground, although the hooves of the horses did. There was no coachman.

The horses slowed to a walk, and the carriage came to a stop. A series of steps unfolded with a flutter, like an accordion made of paper. Would they be st.u.r.dy enough to hold the weight of the occupants as they emerged?

The door cracked open, and a dainty heeled boot issued forth. Like the carriage wheels, its owner did not feel the need to acknowledge gravity. She hovered above the paper steps and floated down. Even then, her feet did not meet the ground.

Vika screwed up her face. She could levitate, too, of course, but it had never occurred to her to do it all the time. It seemed rather vain. Or arrogant. Actually, both.

Upon catching sight of Sergei, the woman tilted her head, keeping her tiny hat perfectly perched on her chestnut curls. She lifted the hem of her voluminous dress and curtsied, albeit somewhat mockingly. "Bonjour, mon frre," she said. "I would say you haven't aged a day in the two and a half decades since I've seen you, but that would be a blatant lie, so I won't. You may say that of me, though, if you'd like."

Sergei stood with his arms folded across his chest, both feet firmly planted in the dirt. "h.e.l.lo, Galina. You are, indeed, the same as ever, if not in looks, then at least in manner."

Behind Galina, a boy stepped out of the carriage. He had no real color, and, come to think of it, no real substance either. He was a shadow, but without a solid person to follow around. The boy did touch his shoes to the paper stairs as he descended, but since he was a mere silhouette, his weight hardly mattered. Remarkable. Vika could not tear her gaze from him.

He turned to Sergei first, removed his top hat, and bowed. Sergei grunted but bowed back, unable to justify rudeness to a boy he'd never before met. The shadow then pivoted to Vika and bowed to her as well.